Secret Hillsborough disaster files to be made public by the Government

Hundreds of documents relating to the Hillsborough disaster are to be made public for the first time after the Home Secretary asked for the 30-year secrecy rule to be waived.

Medical files, police reports and transcripts of high-level operational meetings could be among the documents released, finally allowing the families of the 96 Liverpool fans who died to discover how events unfolded on April 15, 1989.

The families of fans crushed to death in Britain’s worst football tragedy have welcomed the move. Trevor Hicks, of the Hillsborough Families Support Group, said: “This will enable us to see the full picture of events in a way that we have been denied for 20 years. It is vital that these files are released in full and not sanitised in any way.”

The police said last night that they had already agreed to release the documents ten years before the official embargo expires in 2019. The papers could include records of police and ambulance services who went to the Sheffield Wednesday ground and the minutes of a meeting believed to have been held between Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister, and senior South Yorkshire Police officers on the Sunday following the events.